Field
This disclosure is generally related to a content centric network (CCN). More specifically, this disclosure is related to distributing content using a tracking service based on nameless content objects for peer-to-peer sharing in a CCN.
Related Art
The proliferation of the Internet and e-commerce continues to create a vast amount of digital content. Content-centric network (CCN) architectures have been designed to facilitate accessing and processing such digital content. A CCN includes entities, or nodes, such as network clients, forwarders (e.g., routers), and content producers, which communicate with each by sending interest packets for various content items and receiving content object packets in return. CCN interests and content objects are identified by their unique names, which are typically hierarchically structured variable length identifiers (HSVLI). An HSVLI can include contiguous name components ordered from a most general level to a most specific level.
In CCN, an interest is forwarded towards a CCN node that advertises at least a prefix of the interest's name. If this CCN node can provide the content object, this node can return the content object to satisfy the interest. A publisher can publish original content under a certain name and can satisfy an interest with a name that includes the routable prefix of the publisher. A first consumer can download the original content from the publisher based on the publisher's routable prefix. The first consumer may want to become a “seeder” and serve as a node from which a second consumer can obtain the original content. However, the first consumer can only fulfill interests that include its routable prefix. In order to become a seeder, the first consumer may need to rename the content (which contains the routable prefix of the original publisher) to include the routable prefix of the first consumer. Neighboring CCN nodes may need to update their forwarding tables to include entries for each name prefix associated with the content stored by the first consumer. These processes can decrease the efficiency of network operations.